Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/439

 NOTES AND MEMORANDA OBITUARY 417 in private workshops. The longest hours are wrought by omnibus men and some shopmen, who work 70 a week, and by shipmasters, who are set down as working 90. Tm University of Vienna has appointed Dr. B/jhm Bawerk an Honorary Professor (Ehren-professor). The author of 'keories of Interest left his professor's chair at Innsbruck a year ago for a post in the Ministry of Finance in the Austrian metropolis; but the University is determined that he shah not want an excuse for continuing his economical work pari passu with his official. OBITUARY. Tm death is announced, on May 9, of Mr. George Derbyshire, who had filled the post of inspector of the London Bankers' Clearing-house for the last forty years. As the head of the largest financial institution in the world an institution where some 7,000,000,000 are paid away annually lIr. Derbyshire was well known throughout the whole of the financial world. He was appointed to the post of inspector in 1852, succeeding Mr. John Pocock. To him is due the honour of having brought about the most important of all the alterations in the trans- action of clearing business the paying of balances by transfer so that at the present moment the whole of the enormous amount which repre- sents the transactions of ' the house' is split up into hundreds of thousands of items and passed from the coffers of one set of banks into the coffers of another set without the changing of a single note or the passing of a single coin. The plan was originally proposed by Mr. Babbage, but was opposed by the majority of bankers. Mr. Derbyshire urged the matter most strongly, and it was decided at a meeting held at the Bank of England in 1854 that the plan of settlement by transfer should be adopted. Mr. Derbyshire was born in 1822, and was in his seventieth year. He was educated at Coffe's Grammar School, Lewis- ham, and in 1842 obtained an appointment in the London and County Bank, which he left on his promotion to the post of inspector of the Clearing-house. From The Times. No. 2.--oL. I E E